


Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary

by sevenholypathstohell



Category: Jack West Jr Series - Matthew Reilly, REILLY Matthew - Works
Genre: F/M, bloody gratuitous violence, don't sleep with women who can kill you in twenty different ways without asking their permission
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-22
Updated: 2016-06-22
Packaged: 2018-07-16 15:19:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7273384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevenholypathstohell/pseuds/sevenholypathstohell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>We all know what happened that fateful night in Dublin, but what if Zoe had the chance to fight back against Cieran? Short answer: things get bloody.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary

Zoe Kissane lay on her stomach on the hotel bed, arms outstretched in a drunken stupor.  _ Mmmm no, I was foolish to do this, to get with him, but I must...get...up _ she screamed in her head, but she felt oddly sluggish, like those times when she’d try to wake herself normally from sleep but could not.  _ Wiggle your fingers and toes, get the blood moving _ . She did exactly that several times over, but still no response from her limbs. Her roommate however, did notice her attempting to move herself, and hovered behind her, a ravenous vulture encircling his prey.

“Ohhh Zoe.” Cieran Kincaid mewed. “You must be  _ very _ uncomfortable in those shoes, and those clothes. Don’t mind if I help you out like a gentleman.” He bent down and delicately removed Zoe’s three inch heels, appraising her foot. Ordinarily, it was calloused and stank of soggy insoles from her missions, but she’d routinely visit Pinkie’s Pedicures whenever she was off-duty, sometimes with that bitch of a Staff Sergeant Kaitlyn O’ Connell. Every Saturday (or Tuesday) when they were free, and almost always at ten or eleven in the morning, as he’d observe from across the adjacent park with his binoculars (there had been one Saturday when she had been running a different errand, and he’d whined to her about getting caught in the rain without an umbrella, but never mentioned the stalking bit.). Now, Zoe’s foot lay before him, smooth, hairless, almost gleaming.

“What soft and tender feet you have, Zoe.” He purred, taking the foot in his trembling hands, rubbing his nose along her achilles tendon, then licking it.

 

_ No, no, this cannot be happening. I must get out of here. _ She redoubled her efforts to scramble away, but they came out as limp kicks. If she had been sober, Cieran would have been booted right in the face, but no. She just had to take him up on his offer to foot the whole bill for a night’s worth of booze. Just had to shoot down Kaitlyn’s friendly advice to her to turn him down, the kind of advice passed down from one sister to another to avoid  _ those _ men. Just had to doubt Jack was going to make a move on her. Just had, above all, to want to feel loved in Jack’s absence. That was when Captain Cieran Kincaid, Army Intelligence but attached to Zoe’s unit of special forces troops, swooped in and started talking her up. There had been something about Cieran’s charm that gave him a certain enigmatic air; he was slick in speech and yet measured, always letting on that there was something to more to him worth exploring, if only one let themselves get drawn to him. A welcome change of pace from Jack’s bouts of sullenness and distance from her and the rest of the squad, but now more than ever, she’d regretted ever having laid eyes on another.  _ I’m so sorry, Jack. So, so sorry _ .

 

For his part, Cieran had only thoughts of ploughing Zoe against a wall from the moment he’d seen her. That he was trying to get with the girlfriend of one of the most highly rated soldiers in the world was of no concern to him; after all, he still outranked her. One peep of what happened this night and he could have had her thrown in detention on sham charges. Emboldened, he rose and slithered onto his haunches directly above her, lifting the underside of her dress up. The frilly thong she wore exposed her dangerously to him.

“Mmmm, you are a voluptuous one, Zoe.” he purred again, “Does Jack ever get to see you wearing this? It’s a crying shame he isn’t right now.”

He awaited a response from the dazed woman. “Ahh, you’ve gone quiet, little  ráicleach. I hope you will stay that way after tonight.”

Zoe yelped in horror and guilt at the transpiration of events, but Cieran’s drug had slurred her thoughts and actions.

“I’ve waited too bloody long for this. Do forgive me, Ms Kissane.” he gloated, dropping his jeans and peeling her underwear off. Too late.

 

He slid into her with a grunt, intending to go to town on her before she recovered.

“Yahoo! Get ‘im, cowboy!” Cieran hollered in a faux American accent and clung onto Zoe’s hair. This proved to be his fatal error; the shock of her hair getting yanked backwards jolted Zoe into action.

“That’s enough!” Zoe screeched, reaching backwards to grasp his head in her hands. She tucked her thumbs in and gouged them into his eyes, jamming them right in until she heard him scream. With her rapist off-balance, she threw him off and gained enough leverage to slither out and put some distance between them.

“NO!” Cieran bellowed as he clutched his face, “You will get back here and do as I please!”

“Stay away from me!” she fired back, leaning against the wardrobe for support while she regained her senses. 

“Come oonnn, it’s just a little quickie! Jack won’t have to know! In fact, I doubt he’d mind sharing.”

“How fucking dare you, Cieran! You called me a slut, but you can’t keep your own hands in your fucking pants! No, you knew, you KNEW, that I wouldn’t agree to this so you had the bloody bollocks to spike my drink. Who’s the easy one now, you cunt?!”

 

Cieran lunged forward in a blind charge, incensed that she had the gall to fight back. Zoe ducked just in time to send him crashing into the dressing table, but ended up tumbling to the floor herself. Still dazed, she was too slow to dodge as he ripped the bedside telephone from its socket and attempted bring it down on her head.

“Aaaah! I’ll fucking kill you!” she railed as the blow came down on her arm, which she’d quickly raised to block him. The force of it broke the telephone apart in one smack.

“No you won’t, you stupid bitch!” Cieran yelled and threw a furious punch. In a moment of genius, Zoe caught his blow and used the weight he’d put into his own punch to allow her to throw him off, again slipping from under his grasp.

“Help! Police! Police!” she screamed as she scrambled to her feet.

“There’s no one coming to save you, love!” Cieran growled and charged her again. She steeled herself, pivoted and lashed out, driving her foot right into his neck. As he sputtered and choked, Zoe lugged Cieran by his scalp and smashed his head into the bedside porcelain lamp. The lamp shattered and its bulb pressed into Cieran, scalding his already horribly lacerated face. He clutched his face in sheer agony, attempting to scream but his screams came out as inhuman, bloody gurgles.

 

While Cieran lay dying on the bedroom floor, Zoe wrapped herself in a bathroom towel and unlatched the door to escape, nearly crashing into the hotel manager and a security guard.

“H-help me, please!’ she begged, starting to break down.

“What happened? Who did this to you” the manager demanded, aghast at both her nakedness and the bruises on her arm.

Zoe simply pointed back into the room and the guard rushed in, horrified at what they’d found. Clothes strewn all over, various broken furniture, and an equally naked man with blood running from his mouth. The guard attempted to apply CPR to Cieran, but Zoe’s unexpected defensive blow had crushed his windpipe and several nearby blood vessels. Before anyone could ring for an ambulance, Cieran let out a final bloody cough and breathed no more.

“You...you killed him.” The guard said, apoplectic.

“G-good.” Zoe replied in between sobs. “H-he de-des-deserved it.”

“McKenna, enough.” The manager stepped in. “She’s the real victim here. I saw her walking in drunk with him and thought nothing of it, but I didn’t realize he could do this to her. Go and call for an ambulance and calm the other guests, I will see to her personally.”

“What about the police, sir?”

“I will handle them myself, just get the bloody ambulance!”

______________________________________

 

The case dragged for several weeks longer than it should have, but the judge found Zoe not guilty of Cieran’s manslaughter, on the basis of her right to self-defence. Despite the prosecution’s best attempts to argue that she had intended to kill him nonetheless, the judge had simply thrown out every single one of their points when considering the final verdict. Naturally, this took no small amount of monetary and political pressure from the commanders of Jack’s international coalition, but the ends justified the means. Still, she’d become infamous around her unit as ‘Bloody Mary’; someone had given her the callsign as a joke, but now she’d earned it for herself and there was no way the SFA wanted anything more to do with her.

 

“I’m so sorry, Jack.” Zoe later told him in private. “I didn’t know if we were genuine and I wanted to give him a chance. Forgive me, please.”

Jack hugged her once again and stroked her back, listening intently to her grievances.

“I forgave you a long time ago, Zoe.” He reassured her. “You did not ask for it, it wasn’t your fault.”

“You’re not mad at me?”

Jack stiffened, gulped his throat. Zoe felt it too, and looked at him worriedly.

“I...I was mad, but I wasn’t mad with you.”

“You were not?”

“I was mad with myself, Zoe. I blamed myself for getting too engrossed in my work and not paying attention to you. It didn’t help that you were on the other side of the world, so keeping in contact, it was tough, but I missed you like hell.”

“Well, I was obligated to continue with the  Fiannóglaigh, I still have three years on my contract, but…”

“But what, princess?”

Zoe blushed at Jack calling her that. Despite it being a nickname from Lily, she had quite taken to the way Jack said it in affection. She looked at him, a twinkle forming in her eye.

“You know what? The Fiannóglaigh can fianno-fuck themselves, they demoted me when I returned to them and were of no help during the trial. Chances are they won’t want to keep me after all that has happened.”

Jack’s eyes sprang open as he quickly realized what this meant for them, for their relationship and their mission.

“Don’t worry, General O’Hara will put in a good word for me. If everything goes to plan, I will be honorably discharged this time tomorrow. He’s a three star, nobody will fuck with him”

“That means…”

“Yes, Jack.” she looked him in the eyes, her gaze softening. “I’m moving in.”

“That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

They shared a laugh and kissed each other, tenderly, yearningly, earnestly.

“I love you, Jack.”   
“I love you too, Zoe.”

 

______________________________________

 

In the study of a dank dungeon somewhere, the Carnivore sifted through his research notes, single-mindedly focused on locating the Pillars of the Machine, those keys to ultimate power. As he did, his phone rang. Not just any phone, but a private, untraceable line that granted him direct communication with another of his British contacts.

 

“Hello, cousin.” Iolanthe Compton-Jones spoke, her tone equal parts admiration and disdain for her blood relative.

“What is it? Make it quick, I have no time for your games today.”

“It’s Kelpie.” she spoke in a more serious tone, referring to Kincaid’s codename. “He’s ice.”

“How? I hope you weren’t the one to whack him.” He barked.

“Moi?” Iolanthe replied, feigning shock “Oh no no. I am not like you, I have never ordered anything like that, and don’t bring up Diana.”

“Get to the point.”

“It seems he tried to get in bed with one of our, or should I say,  _ your _ competitors. Literally. He got fucked over.”

“Kincaid was a fool, always has been. Alas, he’s served his purpose, we can manage without him. I have other means of tracking my rivals, but I will need you to take a more hands-on approach.”

“What’s that?”

Carnivore eyed the profiles he’d gathered on one Jack West Junior and his international team. He knew they possessed some of the brightest minds in archaeology and would soon learn about the Great Machine- the only thing they lacked was resources.

“Simple. I need you to join them.”

A pause.

“I know that look, cousin.” He teased. “It’s ok, I would not entrust you to this if I knew you couldn’t look out for yourself. You may use them however you wish, so long as you send their findings back to  _ me _ .”

“You can count on it. Farewell, cousin.”


End file.
